Small and flat worlds: A complex network analysis of international trade in crude oil

Abstract

a b s t r a c tGlobal competition for crude oil has increased in the past decade with the entry of industrializing nations such as China and India. Yet we still do not know much about the spatial structure of crude oil commodity trade and its evolution over time. In this paper, we apply complex network analysis to examine the geography of global crude oil flows and its evolution based on the United Nations commodity trade database from 1988 to 2013. Attention is given to the geo-visualization of the networks that trace the rise and decline of oil hubs. The results show that world crude oil is characterized by network characteristics that capture both small world and flat world properties.

Exchange networks from close-up: The case of Lipari obsidian

“…The end result is a sophisticated market economy (intended as a flexible economy founded on demand and supply rather than barters), which may be most similar to our contemporary international crude oil trade Yang et al 2015), a necessity for most, and yet a commodity disproportionally concentrated in a few locations. Its value depends on several variables, some quite artificial such as availability, political decisions, international sanctions, so much that international governmental organizations tasked with controlling it, such as OPEC, have limited influence (Colgan 2014).…”

Analysis of the Dynamic Evolutionary Behavior of American Heating Oil Spot and Futures Price Fluctuation Networks

“…The average path L [9,10,31] is the average distance between any two nodes, for the directional network, L is calculated by ( )…”

“…The strength of node v i is divided into the out-strength and in-strength, but the in-strength of node v i represents the number of times that other nodes convert to it, and the out-strength is in contrast. The in-strength and out-strength of nodes [9] are calculated as follows:…”

Structural Transformation of Minimal Spanning Trees in World Commodity Market

“…The heterogeneity and community structure of complex networks were reported for commodity-specic international trade [21,22]. The trade network for crude oil showed small-world and at-world properties [23].…”